NY Attorney General Letitia James orders NYC hospitals to resume providing gender transition treatments for kids

New York Attorney General Letitia James.

New York state Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter last week to NYU Langone, one of New York City's largest hospital systems, demanding the reinstatement of gender transition treatments for children. A week earlier the hospital system discontinued its program that provided drug and hormone treatments as well as gender transition surgeries to patients under the age of 19, amid increased pressure from the Trump administration. 

“NYU Langone appears to be suddenly and indefinitely cancelling transgender children’s future appointments thereby jeopardizing access to medically necessary healthcare for some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers,” James said in a letter sent last week, and obtained by The New York Post. James went on to accuse the hospital system of violating New York's anti-discrimination laws by discontinuing the treatments for minors. 

The attorney general continued, saying, “NYU Langone’s change in policy is self-imposed; there has been no change in federal law to require the cessation of medically necessary transgender healthcare." In January 2025, President Trump issued an executive order meant to stop hospitals and doctors from "sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions."

James gave the hospital system a March 11 deadline to comply with the order or be subject to "further action" from her office.

Last week, a spokesperson for the hospital system said the change was made after the medical director recently left NYU Langone. The spokesperson also cited the "current regulatory environment," a reference made to the executive order and the HHS threatening to pull federal funding to hospitals that continue providing gender transition surgeries and drugs to minors. Around 40 hospitals nationwide have discontinued similar treatment programs since Trump returned to office. 

Also last week, a former surgeon who formerly worked at NYU Langone apologized for not speaking up against the surgeries, which he said were performed on children as young as 13 and sometimes after the hospital engaged in coercive practices to obtain permission from parents.